MOBA (Massive Online Battle Arena) games, like the ever-popular League of Legends and the upcoming Smite, have definitely garnered a lot of attention for the rising genre and yet it’s still a type of experience that many believe wouldn't translate well to consoles; much like the RTS argument. I'll admit, before I actually saw Guardians of Middle-Earth in action, I too balked at the idea of a fully-fledged MOBA game being played on a 360/PS3 controller.
Sure, there have been a few games on consoles that implement a little MOBA flavor into their core gameplay, see Monday Night Combat, but Monolith Studios is aiming high to produce a deep MOBA game from the established Lord of the Rings IP. While Guardians follows the MOBA formula with two teams of five pushing against each other to destroy the opposing base, the game abandons the idea of buying items in the middle of a match to enhance your character, effectively eliminating one of the largest barriers of entry to the MOBA genre.
But what I liked most about Guardians was that the control scheme utilizes the analogue sticks the same way you'd play top-down shooters. One stick controls your character's movements while the other controls the direction you aim your abilities, which are mapped to the four face buttons. It's a nice translation that lends itself well in providing a similar flow of combat that’s usually accomplished from high amounts of pointing and clicking and I'm glad that they simply didn't map a cursor to a stick. I’m all for the MOBA genre reaching a broader audience and my expectations are high for Guardians of Middle-Earth to successfully do just that.
If you haven’t already, be sure to check out our walkthrough of Guardians of Middle-Earth from Comic-Con 2012!

Something that most horror games have lacked over the past several years is providing a true illusion of danger. Being afraid of death was something I haven't felt in a long time in almost any game I played, until Dark Souls came and rekindled my fears. Though it isn’t inherently a “horror game,” Dark Souls made me wonder why horror games have missed the mark when trying to provide a convincing sense of danger. What I came up with was a list of game mechanics that aren’t used as often as they should be.
Limited power over enemies
Let’s be honest, being armed to the teeth with weaponry to take on hordes of mindless zombies can be a lot of fun, but this comes at the cost of not having a great deal of vulnerability to these enemies. Something that always kept tensions high in games like Silent Hill, Resident Evil, and even Condemned was the scarcity of ammo, forcing us to make every bullet count. Finding a couple shotgun rounds would feel meaningful since it meant your next few enemy encounters would be a little less stressful. You could also take Amnesia’s route and give the player no power at all, making encounters a blood curdling scramble for your life.
Enemies with an identity
Games must allow players some time to get to know an enemy before it’s not longer a threat. If an enemy’s presence is nothing more than cannon fodder, it’s hard for it to stand out and actually represent any level of danger. Being able to decimate a Necromorph within seconds of seeing it deprives that enemy of an identity. This really became apparent to me when I finished the first Dead Space and later stumbled across a screenshot of a Necromorph. Having the chance to actually see it for longer than a couple seconds, I noticed a second pair of hands coming from the stomach region, which was something I never really noticed during my initial play through. On the other hand, I can distinctly remember the look and behavior of the acid-spewing creatures in Silent Hill 2 or the Blind Garrador in Resident Evil 4. Enemies need time to show what they’re about and why we should be afraid of them.
Something to lose
Players need a convincing reason to want to survive. Death shouldn’t be a slight inconvenience; it should be something players dread and do everything in their power to avoid. More often than not, what players lose upon death is the progress made since the last checkpoint. If a game has frequent checkpoints, death is just an annoyance that results in losing only a few minutes of progress. But if those checkpoints scattered out to where you could lose up to an hour or more of progress, you’ll find players being more cautious with their actions; making enemy encounters all the more stressful.
With the new Silent Hill: Downpour just around the corner, I'm really hoping it takes the series back to its roots and incorporates some of the above mechanics. The soundtrack seems to be taking a step in the right direction, but we’ll see how the actual game turns out when it releases next month. Until then, I’m finding little gems like Nightmare House 2 and SCP-087 to keep me up at night.

I’m not shy to admit that horror games are one of my biggest guilty pleasures in gaming. Having played through classics like Resident Evil and Silent Hill or the curiously bad cash-ins like the Saw videogame, I’ve always found myself trying to pick apart why some games succeed at providing a terrifying experience where others fall flat.
Of course this is all subjective to each and every individual. Something that could terrify one person may not even get so much as a wince from another. But I believe that when it comes to frightening the player in a video game, elements such as camera/player control, sound design, sense of danger, pacing, etc. all need to work seamlessly together in order to put players on edge. Since I could spend hours tackling all of these different game elements I’ll focus this particular article on camera control.
Fixed Camera vs Player Controlled Camera
When the developers have complete control over what you're looking at, they're able to deliver a sequence the exact way they intended for you to experience it. Sometimes you'll walk around a corner and the fixed camera will cut to an angle that's so unexpected and unnerving that you experience a sense of uneasiness and tension.
Other times it can cut to reveal an enemy in such a jarring manner that it takes an extra split second to understand what the threat really is.
But when you give the control of the camera to the player, developers have to consider the fact that you might not be looking in the direction they want you to when a sequence occurs, possibly missing the spooky moment altogether. This was a frequent problem I had when I played the first F.E.A.R. game. There are also games that will still give you camera control but resort to these quasi-cinematic instances where the camera will zoom slightly or pull itself in the direction of what it wants you to look at. While this method can be effective in making sure you don’t miss set piece moments, I believe that when something I have control over is momentarily taken away and I’m being horse-collared to look at specific things that intend deepen my immersion, to me it just feels counterintuitive.
This topic can also bleed over a bit into the “pacing” element and why most games that give you camera control depend so heavily on “jump-out-to-startle-you” tactics rather than building a disturbing ambience that stick with us long after we power the system down. I'll save that for another time.
...or this,
offers visual diversity to drive our fears and stick in our minds longer than this...
...or this.